Soccer has a pretty extensive history, dating back to the original rules cobbled together in 1863. One would expect the basics to have always been the same, but the rule on how many players on a soccer field at any given time hasn’t always been set in stone.
Who invented soccer or football or — the more diplomatic approach — association football (soccer for short)? It’s a history lesson that’s often summed up or bastardized with a simple answer: England invented it.
The north of Ireland has been the epicenter of a religious struggle between Protestants and Catholics for centuries.
You know when you’re a young child growing up and your teachers at school or church tell you everyone was created equally and should be respected as such? Well that’s BS when it comes to World Cup winners.
FIFA has put on 21 World Cups dating back to 1930. In them we’ve had deserving World Cup winners like Brazil in 1970 and Spain in 2010 and some underdog World Cup winners like Uruguay in 1950 or West Germany in 1954.
It happens all the time in American college football — a school or organization retroactively decides a national championship decades after the season has completed. For decades college football didn’t have a tournament to decide the best team, so everyone made their own judgements, from current powerhouses to wannabe powerhouses.
Historians call the Swinging Sixties the decade that shook Britain. England and its commonwealth had only just begun a greater recovery period after a post-WWII world, the nation’s youth was a rejuvenated generation of a high-spirited character and British rock was redefining music in a way never before seen in history.
All the conditions were met for a recently Blitzkrieged nation to thrive once again — and the very same stars were aligned in the world of the beautiful game.
The story of why is Seven Nation Army a soccer chant began, as most great stories do: in a bar, before a soccer match. But what makes Seven Nation Army such a unique force in soccer culture is not its small-time origin story or even its catchy riff — it’s the ability for people around the world, regardless of language or background, to meld as one in a unique chorus.